Developing Design Research: The Study of Research as a Tool for Research

This paper will propose that learning - as occurring in all those circumstances whereby agents have an uncompleted understanding of the context in which they operate - has been an effective driving force that has characterised the reflection on design research itself. Some “forms of research” as “forms of learning” acquire even greater importance in those evolutionary environments - intended in the most generic terms - where heterogeneous agents display different forms of rationality, where there is a persistent appearance of novelties deriving from technological, behavioural and organisational innovations driven by the agents themselves, where out-of-equilibrium interactions may frequently occur among the agents. The general key to approach the theme shall be that “learning as a form of research” entails cognitive activities of construction and modification of mental models and behavioural patterns. But as learning may happen in different cognitive and behavioural domains as well as occurring through different processes, a significant emphasis shall be put on those strategic sites for design research that best perform this “learning as research” function in terms of: • potential skills to capture key aspects of design research development, • potential skills to manage the complexity of design issues deriving from the technology- society interaction. The purpose of this work is intended as an informal reflection on the learning processes in design research. While trying an ideal framework for this reflection, an attempt will be made to stress the relevance of the Ph.D. programmes as research strategic sites, where crucial efforts are concentrated to produce collective learning. Observations derived from empirical experience stem from the research context of the Ph.D. programme in Industrial design of Politecnico di Milano. The parts of the paper focusing on this programme experience have limited generalisability.